Scrolled across the cardboard was a note, telling whoever found it that it was not to be opened until 2012. Synchronicity was on their side as the box was found this fall.
“It was good timing,” said Desirae Clark, the school secretary.
However instead of investigating everything then and there, they decided to wait a few more months, as the school will be celebrating its 50-year anniversary on Jan. 18. It officially opened in January of 1963.
“This summer they just happened to be cleaning out one of their storage closets and … came across the time capsule that said open in 2012 and it just so happens we found it in 2012, and nobody knew it was there … it was covered in dust and hadn’t be touched in years,” David Fannon said.
Fannon’s own children attend the school and he also volunteers his time there.
“Everything in the box is dated 1992, 1993,” he said.
Twenty years earlier, students and teachers collected goodies of the day and put them all in a box for the next generation of students and teachers to find.
While cleaning out a storage room, the vice principal, Bev Kezema encountered the prize, secretary Desirae Clark said.
“I wasn’t in the room when she found it but when she found it she brought it down to the office. We had been talking about that it was the 50th birthday … and then she came across this box and brought it right down to the office.
“I’m just the one that possesses it right now. I’m the one that dusted it off,” she said.
The box has been partly opened but sealed objects within it have been left untouched until the anniversary celebration.
“It’s not like it was sealed. I was just in a cardboard box and on the top of the box it says ‘Open in 2012’,” she said.
Perhaps there is an even deeper connection to the idea of a time capsule for the community that uses Reynolds Central School. Currently about 175 families have children in attendance there and many have put numerous generations through its doors over the past 50 years.
“Because it’s a rural school and it’s got such a farming history to it … it’s got quite a history of families going there for quite a long time. All the students are working on their family trees of all their family that has attended,” Fannon said.
While no one currently in working at the school expected to come across this box of ’80s and ’90s memories, others in the community have long memories.
“Nobody that is here knew it was there, but once we started meeting and talking to retired teachers, one of the teachers that we invited to help out (with the anniversary) said ‘make sure you find the time capsule.’ And she had taught at that time. But by the time she had told us about it, we had already found it,” Clark said.
The celebration will be held on Saturday, Jan. 19 from 2 to 4 p.m. at the school with a presentation on its history, the serving of cake and the presentation of the time capsule.
